George Pelecanos - The Way Home

Flynn was polite in the man’s presence, and not unduly sarcastic. Dr. Peterman was a pleasant young guy with a prematurely receding hairline, seemed pretty normal for a head doctor, and not overly analytical or mommy obsessed. Flynn looked around the office, at the usual pedestrian watercolors hung on the wall, at the beanbag chairs for those who liked to get comfy on the floor, at the self-help books on the bookshelf, at that book, and he was silently amused.

One day Dr. Peterman set up an easel and on it was a poster showing an imaging photograph of a brain shot from several angles. The man liked his props. The doctor pointed at a section of the brain, seen from a bird’s-eye view, that was colored green.

“What are we looking at?” said Dr. Peterman.

“From that overhead angle?” said Flynn. “It looks like a set of nuts.”

“Thomas.”

Dr. Peterman smiled charitably. “You’re looking at a brain, of course. Specifically, the brain of a sixteen-year-old boy. This area in green is the limbic system, which regulates emotion. You can see that it is dominant in terms of geography. Now this blue area, representing the prefrontal cortex, is for reasoning. You can see that it’s much smaller. That’s because it develops more slowly than the limbic system.” Dr. Peterman removed the poster to reveal another poster beneath it with similar imaging photographs. “Now, here is the brain of the same boy, but the photos were taken several years later. The boy is now a man in his twenties. And you can see here that the blue and green areas are represented equitably, more or less. Reasoning has, in effect, caught up with emotion.”

“The kid matured,” said Flynn.

“In layman’s terms, yes. Teenage boys act with emotion more frequently than they do with reason. There’s a physiological reason for that.”

“But this thing with the brain must be true for all boys,” said Flynn.

“I know what you’re getting at. Why does someone like Chris find so much trouble and another boy find none at all?”

“Environment,” said Amanda.

“Right,” said Flynn. “But why Chris? You could understand some kid born into poverty, who comes from a broken home, who’s around thugs and drug dealers; I mean, that kid’s got problems coming out of the gate. You might not excuse it, but you can understand why a young man like that finds trouble. But a boy like Chris… why?”

“That’s one of the things we’re here to talk about. But I bring it up to show you that this is not a permanent state of mind for your son. It’s going to improve.”

Amanda reached over and squeezed Flynn’s hand. The doctor had made her feel better, and Flynn supposed that in this regard, the session had been worthwhile.

The holidays came and were difficult. Then New Year’s Eve, the turn of the century, which was supposed to be the biggest party of their lifetimes but which they did not celebrate, and then a return to routine. Low interest rates had encouraged folks to buy homes or take out second mortgages and remodel, which was good for Flynn’s business. He and Amanda were kept busy, and Flynn’s crew had steady work. The greater profit they experienced, however, was offset by the extreme increases in Flynn’s insurance rates. As Moskowitz had predicted, Flynn had been the target of civil suits. The settlements, in total, had been costly.

Amanda visited Chris weekly, sometimes with Flynn, sometimes alone. She thought Chris had grown more receptive to their visits, but Flynn found him sullen and unchanged. On joint visits, it was Amanda who generated conversation and kept things moving along. Chris and Flynn continued to keep each other at arm’s length.

Chris had advanced several levels since he had arrived at Pine Ridge. The monthly level meetings consisted of a kind of informal review where the opinions and testimony of administrators and guards came into play. An inmate was required to achieve Level 6 before he would be considered for release. Chris was now at Level 4. His progress was encouraging to Amanda, and the news of it seemed to brighten her outlook. To Flynn, she looked younger than she had in a long while.

Thomas and Amanda continued to see Dr. Peterman. One cool day in late March they made the familiar drive to his office, complete with Flynn’s running commentary on Dr. Peterhead, the watercolors, the books in his office, and his fees. Amanda did not mind. She was just happy that Flynn was cooperative and coming along.

As he did with every visit, the doctor returned to the issue of the gulf between father and son. For his part, Flynn contended that Amanda was too soft on Chris. Flynn said that while he disagreed with her, he understood Amanda’s approach and that someone, he supposed, had to continue to nurture their son, but he could not bring himself to do it. Eventually he admitted that he was too wounded by Chris’s attitude and actions to speak to him in a loving way. And then, perhaps because he was embarrassed by this admission, Flynn claimed that his hard-line stance was part of a larger strategy.

“Somebody’s got to show him the iron fist,” said Flynn. “Let him know that what he’s done has been unacceptable. Amanda can be the one to pour juice into his sippy cup and give him hugs.”

“Oh, please,” said Amanda.

“I’m saying, you’ve got your role, Amanda, and I’ve got mine.”

“Why don’t you switch roles?” said Dr. Peterman. “Amanda can adapt a bit of a tougher stance and you can do the nurturing.”

“What,” said Flynn, “you want me to wear a skirt?”

Dr. Peterman smirked nervously and blushed a little. “Well, I wouldn’t put it quite that way.”

Flynn looked at his watch. A quiet settled in the office and they all knew the session was done.

Flynn and Amanda walked over to the Dancing Crab and had lunch and a few beers. Amanda called Flynn a Neanderthal but laughed about his comments in Dr. Peterman’s office, and in her eyes he saw light and youth. That afternoon, they made love in the quiet of their bedroom. She fell asleep as the sun streamed in through the parted curtains. Flynn stepped over their Lab, Darby, who was sprawled out and napping on his cushion, and got dressed and left the house.

He drove down Bingham Drive into Rock Creek Park and stopped at a turnoff lot, where he cut the engine, his van facing the water. He and Amanda had come here one day as teenagers after they had eaten mushrooms from a plastic bag. Their spot was a beach of fine pebbles and sand, and they had lain down upon it. Tommy Flynn had taken Amanda’s shoes off and massaged the balls of her feet and her toes, and as the psilocybin kicked in, they laughed without reason and uncontrollably for what seemed like a long time. Flynn could barely imagine having so little responsibility again, so little weight on his shoulders. To look up and see no clouds blocking the sun.

I’m just disappointed, thought Flynn. That’s all it is. I’ve been a failure as a father, and there’s nothing ahead of me that looks promising or new.

In one of their sessions, Dr. Peterman had looked straight at him and said, “Why do you think Chris has gone down this road, Thomas?” And: “Is it possible that Chris was trying to please you or emulate you in some way? By your admission, you were a pretty tough kid. Did Chris feel he had to be that way, too, in order to garner your respect and your love?”

Flynn had taken no offense. Peterman was smart and he was onto something. The doctor knew.

Flynn tried to think on his early years with his son. How he had continually emphasized the physical over the intellectual with Chris. John Wayned him up with instructions to never show weakness and “step aside for no man.” He had taught his son how to fight but never shown him the value in walking away from one.